Aston Martin has had an average start to the season so far, being in the fight for the points pretty consistently with only Alonso in the main. In comparison to this point last year, the team still has a lot of work to do to keep up with the others in the top five.
The Silverstone-based team arrived to the last Grand Prix at Imola with a huge amount of new upgrades that didn’t really turn out how they were supposed to regarding performance — Lance Stroll finishing in the points in a lowly P9, and Fernando Alonso the last car to take the chequered flag.
“It was overall not the weekend we were hoping for with the upgrades we brought,” admitted Stroll. “But I think we’ve learned a lot and now the focus is really to kind of take what we learned over the weekend and keep chipping away at understanding it and maybe optimising the upgrade better this weekend.
“But then also just keep kind of bringing bits to try and get further upgrades.”
The race weekend in Monaco is about to start, and the Canadian driver confirmed they will run the upgrades on the unique street circuit as well.
The key to that is finding the reason behind the upgrades not delivering as expected, though Stroll denies it could be because he would have to set-up the car differently with them or something similar.
“I think it’s just we’re learning a lot about our car and the strengths and weaknesses and some of the balance limitations that we’ve had throughout the season are still there,” he explained.
The balance limitations seem to be the biggest problem for Aston Martin right now, the team fighting with these issues throughout the seven races we had so far in 2024.
Asked to further elaborate, the Canadian described the challenges in more detail: “Yeah, I mean… the usual stuff. Some entry oversteer, some [mid] corner understeer, these kinds of things. Kerb riding, just the usual things to keep working on.”
Even if Stroll’s words may sound calm, he admitted the balance is worse than in the car they had last year when Alonso could drive his way around them in the second half of the campaign, saying, “it’s been more of a challenge for sure”.
The team will have to find an ultimate solution, focusing on getting the car in the right balance window, just as much as focusing on bringing upgrades and adding downforce.
“You know, Formula 1, that’s how the development works. You try and get the car as balanced as possible and add as much downforce as you can. Same thing over here,” the Canadian added.
There is no denying the tracks in Imola and Monaco are very different — the Italian circuit is difficult with its bumps and big kerbs, while the latter is “much smoother, so the car will change a lot here”.
